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Most Christmas carols celebrate a birth that has already happened. O Come, O Come, Emmanuel does not. Every verse asks for something that has not arrived yet, and even the refrain is in the future tense: Emmanuel shall come. It is an Advent hymn, written for the waiting rather than the arrival. This page has the lyrics as printed in 1861, the medieval prayers each verse comes from, the hidden message in those prayers, and the strange story of where the tune turned up.
Listen: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel — Full Lyrics
Verse 1
O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here,
Until the Son of God appear.
Chorus
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel!
Verse 2
O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan's tyranny;
From depths of hell Thy people save,
And give them victory o'er the grave.
Chorus
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel!
Verse 3
O come, Thou Dayspring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death's dark shadows put to flight.
Chorus
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel!
Seven prayers for seven nights
Long before it was a hymn, this was a set of short Latin chants called the O Antiphons. Since at least the eighth century, monasteries have sung one each evening from December 17 to December 23, before and after the Magnificat at Vespers. Each one calls on the coming Messiah by a different title from the Old Testament, and each begins with the word O.
The seven titles are Sapientia (Wisdom), Adonai (Lord), Radix Jesse (Root of Jesse), Clavis David (Key of David), Oriens (Dayspring, or the rising sun), Rex Gentium (King of the nations) and Emmanuel (God with us).
At some point someone turned several of the antiphons into rhyming Latin verse with a refrain, Gaude, gaude, Emmanuel. The earliest known printing of that hymn, Veni, veni, Emmanuel, is in a Catholic songbook published in Cologne in 1710. Each English verse we sing today is still one of those antiphons, compressed into four lines.
The message hidden in the initials
Take the first letter of each Latin title, in the order the antiphons are sung: S, A, R, C, O, R, E. Now read them backward. You get ero cras, which is Latin for “tomorrow I will be there.”
The last antiphon is sung on December 23. The answer to a week of asking, hidden in the asking itself, is that he will come tomorrow, on Christmas Eve. Nobody knows whether a medieval monk built the acrostic on purpose or whether it was noticed later, but it has been pointed out in commentaries on the antiphons for centuries.
The hymn version scrambles the order. It opens with Emmanuel, the antiphon sung last, because that is the title that sums up all the others.
What each verse is quoting
Every title in the hymn is a reference, and knowing them turns the verses from pleasant medieval language into a short tour of the prophets.
Emmanuel comes from Isaiah 7:14, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel, which Matthew 1:23 translates for his readers: God with us. The “captive Israel” mourning “in lonely exile” is Israel in Babylon, far from home and waiting to be brought back.
Rod of Jesse is Isaiah 11:1: there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse. Jesse was King David’s father, and by Isaiah’s time David’s family tree had been cut down to a stump. The promise is that something living will grow out of it anyway.
Dayspring is the old English word for dawn. It comes from Luke 1:78, where Zacharias, John the Baptist’s father, says the dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. That is exactly what the verse asks for: the gloomy clouds of night dispersed and death’s dark shadows put to flight.
Draw nigh, draw nigh
The English words are the work of John Mason Neale, an Anglican priest who spent much of his short life translating Latin and Greek hymns that English churches had forgotten. He published his first version in 1851 in Mediaeval Hymns and Sequences, and it did not begin the way we know it. It opened Draw nigh, draw nigh, Emmanuel.
Ten years later the editors of Hymns Ancient and Modern printed a revised text beginning O come, O come, Emmanuel. That 1861 version is the one that stuck, and the three verses on this page are taken from it.
A tune nobody could find
The melody, known as VENI EMMANUEL, was published in 1856 by Thomas Helmore, Neale’s collaborator, in The Hymnal Noted. Helmore said he had copied it from a French missal in the National Library in Lisbon. No one could ever find that book, and for over a century many musicians suspected Helmore had written the tune himself and dressed it up as ancient.
In 1966 the musicologist Mary Berry found the melody in a fifteenth-century French manuscript, set to different Latin words. Helmore had not invented it. He had found a real medieval tune and fitted Neale’s words to it. That is why it sounds the way it does, closer to chant than to the major-key carols around it on the Christmas playlist.
About this recording
Words by Latin O Antiphons (12th-c. verse form), tr. J.M. Neale 1851, rev. Hymns Ancient & Modern, 1861. Tune VENI EMMANUEL, adapted by Thomas Helmore, The Hymnal Noted 1856, from a 15th-c. French processional, 1861. Both the text and the tune are in the public domain, so this hymn is free to print, project, sing and record.
This is a new traditional gospel arrangement of the original public-domain words, produced with AI-assisted music generation. The text is unchanged; the setting is new, so a hymn you know well will be familiar in its words and different in its music.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who wrote O Come, O Come, Emmanuel?
No single person. The verses come from the O Antiphons, Latin chants sung in the week before Christmas since at least the eighth century. An unknown writer turned them into the Latin hymn Veni, veni, Emmanuel, first printed in Cologne in 1710. John Mason Neale translated it into English in 1851, and the version sung today is the revision printed in Hymns Ancient and Modern in 1861.
Is O Come, O Come, Emmanuel in the public domain?
Yes. The English text sung today was printed in Hymns Ancient and Modern in 1861, and the VENI EMMANUEL tune was published by Thomas Helmore in 1856. Both are long before the 1930 line that governs public domain status in the United States, so you may print, project, sing and record the hymn freely. A modern arrangement can still carry its own copyright, so check the specific arrangement you use.
Is O Come, O Come, Emmanuel a Christmas song?
It is an Advent hymn. It is sung in the weeks before Christmas, and every verse is a prayer for the Messiah to come, not a celebration that he has arrived. The refrain is in the future tense: Emmanuel shall come. Many churches hold it back until Advent begins and stop singing it once Christmas Day arrives.
What does Emmanuel mean?
Emmanuel, also spelled Immanuel, is Hebrew for “God with us.” The name comes from Isaiah 7:14, and Matthew 1:23 applies it to Jesus and gives the translation.
What is the hidden message in the O Antiphons?
The seven Latin titles in the O Antiphons are Sapientia, Adonai, Radix, Clavis, Oriens, Rex and Emmanuel. Read their first letters backward and they spell ero cras, Latin for “tomorrow I will be there.” The last antiphon is sung on December 23, so the answer points to Christmas Eve.
Why does O Come, O Come, Emmanuel sound so sad?
The melody is medieval. In 1966 the musicologist Mary Berry found it in a fifteenth-century French manuscript, and it is built on an older modal scale rather than the major key most carols use. The words also mourn before they rejoice: they begin with captive Israel in exile, waiting.
How many verses does O Come, O Come, Emmanuel have?
The 1861 Hymns Ancient and Modern text has five: Emmanuel, Rod of Jesse, Dayspring, Key of David and Lord of Might. In 1916 Henry Sloane Coffin translated two more antiphons, Wisdom and Desire of Nations, so some hymnals print seven. Most churches sing three or four. The three on this page are the first three of the 1861 text.
